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Canadian Journal of Disability Studies Published by the Canadian Disability Studies Association Association Canadienne des Études sur l’Incapacité Hosted by The University of Waterloo www.cjds.uwaterloo.ca This document has been made accessible and PDF/UA compliant by AbleDocs Inc. For more information go to https://www.abledocs.com Liang, “It’s Not Weird Like Werewolves” CJDS 8.2 (April 2019) It’s Not Weird… Like Werewolves. Bridget Liang, PhD Candidate, Women, Gender, and Feminist Studies York University [email protected] Abstract: This paper is both a theoretical and creative exploration using fan ficion. Monsters have drawn my interest because they are often metaphors for marginalized folks. Through histories of marginalized experiences represented as monsters and villains, I claim the monster as my own. In more recent iterations of the monster, I have observed this pull towards the normate looking at the show Teen Wolf in comparison to the 1984 movie by the same name. The monster becomes the protagonist, but in doing so, ends up becoming predominantly white, heterosexual, cisgender, abled, thin, and conventionally attractive. Furthermore, the representations of the monster consist of bodies that draw closer to the normate, but are exemplary of the norms of desirability. In short, they find the hottest models to play as monsters. The monster is no longer the marginalized subject, but becomes an expected, unattainable norm of desirability like Audre Lorde’s “mythical norm”. In response to this mythical norm, I have rewritten the scripts as fans sometimes do. In Teen Wolf, the protagonist, Scott McCall becomes abled upon becoming a werewolf. What if he stayed disabled and wasn’t drawn closer to the normate? What if instead, he stayed a disabled nerd and ended up in a relationship with his best friend, Stiles, another disabled nerd? This little slice of life explores a little about what it’s like to be disabled, queer, racialized, and a monster that’s a little more representative of what it’s like to be marginalized. Keywords: disability; fanfiction; intersectionality; monsters; storytelling 163 Liang, “It’s Not Weird Like Werewolves” CJDS 8.2 (April 2019) It’s Not Weird… Like Werewolves Bridget Liang, PhD Candidate, Women, Gender, and Feminist Studies York University [email protected] On Monsters and Marginalization I fell in love with monsters while reading an essay from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s book, “Monster Theory” (Cohen, 1996). In their essay, they described how monsters were often stand-ins for marginalized folks that the broader population feared. Those given the privilege of being “normal” fear racialized folks, they fear disabled bodies and becoming disabled, they fear minds that function differently, they fear the gay boogieman waiting to jump out at them, and they fear the lady “who isn’t really a lady after all”. Those people who show up as villains in popular culture, those people who have to die in order for the (white, heterosexual, cisgender, non-disabled, non-fat) protagonists to have their happy ending together. Frankenstein’s Monster and Medusa were monsters whose stories resonated with me. They were called monsters by people and were treated as less-than-human for just existing and being different. And being less-than-human meant being treated terribly. Frankenstein’s Monster (Shelley, 1818) yearned for community, acceptance and love but found none because of how he looked. He repeatedly demonstrated he was a living, feeling, fully sentient being, but was still met with rejection and abject horror based on his appearance which he had no control over. When he asked for a companion to make his existence less lonesome, he was betrayed and denied personhood by his very creator. He dies alone without ever experiencing love or kindness. Meanwhile, Medusa was blamed for her rape at the hands of Poseidon and subsequently transformed into a loathsome form whose gaze is so horrible that she turns men into stone. She gained the ability to protect herself, but her ability made her a monster in the eyes of the people around her. What could be reinterpreted as a gift that could be used to 164 Liang, “It’s Not Weird Like Werewolves” CJDS 8.2 (April 2019) protect herself from being hurt ever again made her a threat. Because obviously a woman who can fight back is a monster. She had to die. Many men who tried to kill her, and the one who was finally successful was hailed as a “hero” for killing the woman who had the power to defend herself. I realized that these monsters are my people. I recognized their pain because it was like my own. They experienced rejection because their bodies were different. They were denied respect and love. The way Frankenstein’s monster was seen as repulsive to look at reminds me of how kids were horrified by my deformed ear. When I was sexually assaulted, I took solace in Medusa’s story as a fellow victim who fashioned herself anew as someone terrifying and powerful from the tools she had available to her. As a child I was seen as a freak. I was that fat, effeminate, disabled, scarred, mixed race kid. I was taught that there is something wrong with me from a young age. I dreamed that I would wake up and my right ear would bloom like a flower and gain hearing. That my scars would magically knit into smooth skin. That my fingernails would reshape themselves to look more normative, and that my stomach would flatten. It’s always a challenge to unravel the multiple layers of my experiences just due to how they all bleed into each other. Disability bleeds into gender bleeds into race bleeds into disability bleeds into sexuality. It’s hard to tell where one ends and the others begins. I was picked on for being disabled, Asian, feminine, and fat. I tried to fit in with boys because the doctor and everyone around me said I was a boy and should be friends with boys, but I failed miserably. I spent most of my childhood with very few friends because I was a little ball of abuse and trauma. I was also an unrecognized autistic child that wanted friends but wasn’t like other kids. I wasn’t happy as I tried and failed to fit in. It was only after I came into my queerness and found queer, trans, and disability community that I was able to find value in my life. I learned to (somewhat) accept the traits that were seen as undesirable. I 165 Liang, “It’s Not Weird Like Werewolves” CJDS 8.2 (April 2019) didn’t find transformative self-love in the body positivity movements. It was finding value and beauty in my fatness, in my transness, in my disabilities, in my mixed raceness, in all the pain and suffering produced from social pressures that tell me to be someone I’m not. There is nothing wrong with me and everything wrong with the oppressive systems that do not want bodies like mine to exist. The issue is that other people around me do not value a body like mine. Especially since I occupy multiple oppressed groups. I am expected to not be disabled or fat. I am expected to follow gender norms imposed on me and to find an appropriate woman to procreate with as an adult. (Even while a body such as mine is understood to be undesirable for procreation). And I am expected to integrate into Canadian society leaving behind the Chinese half of my roots. I didn’t and don’t buy into weight loss culture. I refused to undergo further surgery to “correct” my physical disability or change my behaviour to fit in with neurotypicals. I not only transitioned but also removed any possibility of procreation, and I took my mother’s Chinese family name. For my transgressions, I have been punished for it by both mainstream and marginalized communities through things such as fewer job opportunities, sexual harassment, and fewer quality romantic interests. I have had to fight tooth and nail for most everything that I have. Like Frankenstein’s Monster and Medusa, I was made to feel like an outcast, unwanted, and monstrous. But still, despite the resonance between our monstrous stories there was always something missing for me. While I felt their pain, that’s all there was. Both Frankenstein’s Monster and Medusa, and countless other monsters, end up dead and alone. And that didn’t sit right with me. If the beings that I identified with were slated for death, what did that mean for my existence, my future? Where were people like me in the future? Did we have any future or are we supposed to be dead lost in the mists of the past? 166 Liang, “It’s Not Weird Like Werewolves” CJDS 8.2 (April 2019) Finding Myself in Fanfic I’ve been reading fan fiction (also referred to as fanfic or fic by fans) since I was fourteen years old. Fan fiction has influenced my sexuality and was my first queer community. It was part of why coming to terms with being queer was a non-issue for me. Queerness was everywhere and normal in fanfic. As I gradually developed a feminist, anti- oppressive understanding, my relationship to fan fiction changed. I enjoyed fan fiction then, and still enjoy it now, but I have developed a sense of ambivalence towards it. The bodies and experiences I read were of primarily white, male, able bodied, thin, conventionally attractive individuals who found love from similar demographics. I would live vicariously through these privileged individuals as they fell in love, had tons of amazing sex, married, and adopted/had kids.

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